


The Butterfly Effect

by hitlikehammers



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universes, Butterfly Effect, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-27
Updated: 2009-09-27
Packaged: 2017-12-12 05:45:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/807972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even the most innocuous choices of James Tiberius Kirk are not to be taken lightly. </p>
<p>Or: Five Ways That It Could Have Happened, And One Way That It Did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Butterfly Effect

**Author's Note:**

> For the [](http://cliche-bingo.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://cliche-bingo.livejournal.com/)**cliche_bingo** Prompt - Hey, You’re... Me: Meeting Alternate Universe Counterparts.

If there’s one thing he’s learned - one thing that’s made an impression upon him, etched like a brand in his very skin - it’s that nothing is certain, nothing’s set in stone. The smallest aberration, the most infinitesimal change can echo on through the cosmos, twisting destinies, erasing fates, rewriting the laws of life and death. Every choice bares a consequence.

As such, even the most innocuous choices of James Tiberius Kirk are not to be taken lightly.

On any given day - a Tuesday or a Saturday or the first day of June - Jim Kirk makes the conscious choice to remain in his bed three-point-one-three minutes after the computer rouses him, staring blankly at the dim ceiling tiles as the lights slowly fade into focus, his eyes adjusting with the passing of seconds, with the slow seep of breath from his lungs. He shrugs on his command golds and takes to the mess hall for his morning meal, carrying his tray of something grey and porridge-y and too thick for normal human consumption that smells like brown sugar and ass and that sticks to the bowl like rubber fucking cement. He swallows it down, though, like a child gagging on cough syrup or string beans or live earthworms on a schoolyard dare; or at least, he swallows down enough of it to keep his stomach from speaking louder than he can. He strides to the bridge, letting three ensigns take the turbolift before him so that he can finish a conversation with Uhura; who, as the only crewmember aboard who speaks any Rihloxian (surprise surprise) had agreed to meet with the ambassadorial staff regarding security protocol before the negotiations formally began and the delegation beamed aboard. As such, she’d be absent from the bridge when the actual hailing of said delegation took place, and apparently, she still did not entirely trust her captain to heed her written report without a verbal breakdown of the major bullet points - of which, admittedly, Jim only ever really processes the first four or five, because after that they all tend to blend into triviality (which he mentions after she hits her seventh unique point of interest, and which consequently earns him a roll of those heavily-lashed eyes.) He commits the specified hailing frequency to memory at her behest (“just in case,” she insists, “they’re sensitive about numbers”), when she remembers one obscure detail about the Rihloxian party they would be meeting with: they believe wholeheartedly in the inherent evil of the number four.

So he conducts a quick and painless series of trade agreements with some intensely tetraphobic trilobites (big fucking trilobites on two fucking legs, with long teeth and sharp, pointy tails). He bids the party farewell shortly before shift change, escorting them to the transporter pad just as the operators are switching out, and when he returns to the bridge to turn the conn over to Spock for the evening, he catches Uhura brushing her fingers against his first officer’s, tender and discreet beneath the console, but intimate, even as they avert their eyes and she makes her way to her station. Something tightens in his chest, in his throat, and as he settles back in his chair to tie up the last of his loose ends for the afternoon, he doesn’t release that tension with a jab as to their illicit fraternization, or regarding the suggestive proximity of their pressed fingertips to Uhura’s ass - instead, he sits in silence, breathing slowly and deeply, the air harsh against his lungs as he mindlessly completes a string of reports, the recycled oxygen suddenly dry as he hesitates on the last of the documents - an invitation. To dinner. With him. For the person who’s been sharing his bed and his room and his life and _damnit_ , his heart for longer than he likes to think about; for his closest friend, the person he trusts most in the universe, the one he can count on for just about anything. His other half, his _better_ half (and apparently, the half that’s still got balls, because _his_ surely dropped off when he became such a goddamned sap).

For Bones.

He has to push the time back to long past the traditionally appropriate mealtime by the time he’s done agonizing over the contents of the memo, but what catches him up is the end, the sign-off. Not that it needs one - Bones will know who it’s from - but it seems important somehow, essential, to the extreme that Jim doesn’t notice the way that Spock is eyeing him curiously, wondering why he hasn’t yet taken his leave. He bites at the end of his stylus in thought: just his name, maybe. Or something smart, cheeky, dirty; maybe something generic, like “see you there” or “I’ll be waiting” - that last one might work, significantly suggestive as it is; Bones will no doubt be able to envision the way his eyebrows would arch, be able to hear the breathless falsetto he’d whisper the words in if Jim had been delivering the line in person. But the signature he wants to use, inexplicably, is the one that keeps his chest tight and his teeth pressed hard against his bottom lip, and before he can change his mind, he sends the communication, priority two:

_< < Meet me for dinner - 2130, officer’s mess. Tell Chapel that if she covers for you, I’ll tack an extra week onto her shore leave request when I sign it. Love, Jim. >>_

His heart beats a little faster, a little harder as he vacates the captain’s chair and tells Spock with a smirk to “go ahead and knock himself out,” then winks at Uhura and pats Chekov on the shoulder before he departs, wondering idly if Bones will be pleased (or at least, pleased enough to let him off without anything green on his plate for just this one meal) or if he’ll scare the doctor off with his impulsive declaration; not that it should be all that much of a surprise, really - if Jim Kirk is anything, he’s forward, unequivocal. Or maybe passionate. Or maybe both.

He’s feeling a little lightheaded, a little dizzy and disoriented as he lays on his bed, stripping out of his uniform and stretching out slow, the cool slide of the linens against warm skin soothing him instantly, and lethargy sets in unexpectedly as he glances at the time display on the opposite wall. Three and a half hours until he’s meant to be in the mess - and he doesn’t even have to think if it’s enough time to spare before he’s dozing off, grabbing what rest he can before he takes gamma that night.

__________________________________

 

Jim Kirk can’t remember a time when he’s slept and didn’t dream.

And given the givens, having a proclivity for the out-of-body dream experience isn’t the worst of Jim’s problems, even if it’s been known to weird him the fuck out on more than one occasion. But rather than fight it - rather than program the biosensors to interfere with his REM stage to keep him from watching himself jump off cliffs or bleed out on missions or have sex with faceless strangers or fall asleep in Bones’ arms, he chooses to go with it, to let it ride and suffer the consequences in exchange for the occasional, subtle joys. He chooses the trade off, suffers the blackness for the pinprick of light, the indulgence of beauty every parsec or so.

And the choices of James Tiberius Kirk are not to be taken lightly.

__________________________________

 

Once, Jim Kirk stayed in his bed for seven-point-five-seven minutes following the ship’s computer announcing that it was time for him to rise and proverbially shine.

The change in routine warrants an unexpected surprise: catching his lover as he’s leaving the mess with a small cup of orange juice (not that Jim can see it, he just knows his Bones well enough to tell by the way he licks his lips after a sip, knows the shape of his mouth when he drinks something hot, like coffee, or when he drinks something strong, like whiskey, or when he drinks something sweet, like now) clutched awkwardly between his fingers, too small for his hands. “Bones,” Jim calls, and something in him warms at the way the doctor’s eyes light up, despite the annoyance schooled across his features as he turns; “lunch later?”

“Funny thing, Jim,” Bones drawls, and Jim loves that, _loves_ that. “I’ve got this obligation to attend to. It’s called my job.” Jim doesn’t indulge that with a response, just steps into the other man’s personal space and slings an arm around his shoulder, drawing himself into the warmth of Bones’s side, into his scent, waiting out the reply that he wants.

Bones sighs, and Jim pulls him just a little closer as he exhales with an exasperation that’s only half-genuine, only half-faked; “If I can,” he murmurs gruffly, eyes elsewhere, but breath close to Jim’s ear; “sure.”

Jim’s grin is nothing short of feral, nothing less than giddy, and he is not ashamed. “Excellent.”

All in all, the day drags, and the diplomatic business he’s forced to resolve ends up taking much more time than is necessary, due to having to redraft all of the agreements to eliminate any use of the number four in any part of any document, not to mention coming up with a whole _new_ contract in order to assure the Rihloxians their peace of mind in approving five proposals instead of one less. After bouncing only half the ideas off Starfleet Command and consequently awaiting the appropriate approval had taken him long past the end of alpha shift, he grudgingly admits defeat.

_< < Negotiations are taking longer than expected. How’s dinner sound? >>_

He’s only just managed to convince the Rihloxian ambassador that the word “for,” while phonetically similar in numerous dialects of the English language, has no practical connection to the number the trilobite-man curses as demonic, when Bones finally gets back to him:

_< < Can’t; some idiots in engineering got themselves drenched in Carvotian oil and need to stay for observation until the goddamn phosphorescence wears off. Rain check? >>_

_< < Sure thing. >>_ he sends back, and it’s okay, obviously - it’s not as if there’s anything that he can really do about it if it weren’t. But Jim can’t deny he’s disappointed, can’t deny that he’s a little less loquacious and a little more direct for the remainder of the trade discussions; that he just wants to get back to his quarters for the evening in hopes that sometime before they begin their days anew, Bones might be free, and might just be struck by the desire to stop by and make it up to him.

_< < Sexual favors increase my propensity for forgiveness when I get stood up by extremely attractive men.>>_ he sends as he exists the transporter room after bidding the dignitaries a polite farewell. _< < Just an FYI. >>_

He slides into the turbolift and rests his head against the solid panel opposite his point of entry, breathing in as his eyes slide shut for a moment, opening them again only just before he reaches his deck, and only then to check the response:

_< < Duly noted. Now stop pushing the regs for sexual harassment and get to work, you horny fuck. >>_

And that helps, because it makes Jim laugh as he exits the lift and steps onto the bridge; because he can see the roll of the eyes, the quirk of the lips, the slope of the brows as if the man himself were right before him. And that helps.

If he leaves the bridge seventeen-point-two seconds early, Spock is the only one who would notice, and if he does, he chooses not to comment on the matter. If Jim takes his meal in his quarters, it’s not entirely out of character. If he demands the time every three-and-a-half minutes as the hour approaches midnight, the computer isn’t programmed to comment; if he’s read the same three lines of the report in front of him more times than he cares to reflect upon, it’s only because he’s feeling strangely needy tonight; it’s only because he physically _aches_ to be wrapped around another body, pressed against another living soul, and these days, the only other he’s interested in is a pissy Southern doctor with a heart of fucking gold.

The voice that echoes through the room tells him that it’s closer to 0200 hours when Bones finally comes round, a voice that tells him in no uncertain terms that he should be “sleeping, you masochistic fuck; I’m not shooting you full of stims tomorrow when you’re dead on your feet, you got that?”

And when firm hands rest upon his shoulders, lead him to the bed, Jim doesn’t waste time capturing lips, pulling that frame down on top of him, and suddenly any whisper of fatigue abandons him, because the fingertips that hold him down, the mouth that traces from the middle of his chest to his hip, to the firm muscles of his thighs, that press gentle kisses just below his scrotum, just above the growing strain of his erection; that touch, everywhere and anywhere, is fucking divine. And neither of them bothers to pretend that this is anything other than what it is; in seconds, without words, Bones is sprawled across his legs, exhaling softly across the sensitive skin, and before Jim can even shift, can even think, that hot mouth is on him, and nothing else matters.

And so Jim - who feels the pleasure build secondhand in his loins, the heat a slow burn for him, instead of an inferno - watches himself from outside of the dream, studies the emotions that tear across his face as Bones sucks him, tongue hot and firm as he swills around Jim’s tip, slowly licking stripes up and down his cock, the steady stream of Bones’s breath sparking shudders as it hits the lines of wetness, smeared saliva and precum mingling with the droplets of sweat that slip from the tip of Bones’s nose. He watches the way that his fingertips lace through Bones’s hair, combing through with a gentle sort of care, a strangled sort of madness that he can’t contain, that shivers in the hollow of his throat as he struggles for air around the violent throb of his heart.

He watches the way that he keens, the way that he arches before everything in him disappears, slackens, and dies, and when he sees himself still entirely, waiting for that glorious comedown, his gaze shifts to Bones, to the way his throat works down Jim’s seed and the way his lips move with practiced ease, a knowledge of the body he’s tending to that rests on his profession, but excels it to unparalleled heights - a tenderness, and need for perfection that glazes the slivers of his eyes that are visible beneath hooded lids, a want for the man beneath his hands, for _Jim_ , that Jim himself has never quite seen like this before, so unveiled, so naked and sure. Bones’s teeth scrape his flaccid shaft as he lets Jim drop from his mouth before sliding up the length of Jim’s spent frame in one graceful push, muscles rippling as they fall on top of the sheets, hot and breathless, and Jim can taste himself on the fleshy insides of Bones’s lips when they lean in for a lazy kiss before they curl inward - _into_ one another, really, but it’s all the same in the end - and let what little sleep is left to grasp wash over them and take hold.

Back in his quarters - alone - Jim shifts in his bed, a heat in the pit of his gut as he moans in his sleep, and instead of waking, he sleeps on, sated, the ghosts of touch upon his hips, between his thighs like the hand of god upon him as he dreams.

__________________________________

 

Once, Jim Kirk used his replicator instead of going to the mess for breakfast, and ended up with overcooked bacon and runny eggs instead of that imitation oatmeal with something strange and only vaguely resembling maple syrup.

He gets to the bridge early, which means that he catches the tail end of gamma shift and gets to watch Spock occupy the Captain’s chair for all of twelve minutes (which is a hobby of his, admittedly, because Spock just looks so fucking uncomfortable in that chair these days, and it never fails to render Jim simultaneously both nostalgic and amused to see it, and that’s not a half-bad emotional combination for him, really) before alpha starts. He leans against Hannity’s station and proceeds to flirt halfheartedly with his operations officer, simply because she never fails to light up when he does, and contrary to popular belief, he thoroughly enjoys making other people happy.

He notices, as real as anything, the stiffness in his neck first, but writes it off to a combination of sparring in the rec the previous evening and the angle at which he slept. His throat feels tight, but that sometimes happens - he’s still getting used to the recycled air on a ship, drier even than a summer on the plains. He watches, outside looking in at himself, as he registers, processes, and ignores a number of slight warning signs, sweat beading at his collar and yet, from the outside, he retains his calm, and so what if it’s a dream; Jim feels a surge of sudden pride in himself at his composure - maybe he’s managing this captain thing alright, after all. It’s not until he notices the sound of his own heavy pulse in his ears, which is admittedly more alarming than the previous symptoms, that his brow furrows, his eye squint, and everything is dizzyingly blurry and painfully clear through the hybrid eyes of two different selves, and he both hears and doesn’t hear when Hannity asks if he’s alright, notices and doesn’t notice when Spock glances in his direction with something more than interest but less than worry somewhere deep behind his eyes; feels and doesn’t feel it as he crumples to the floor, boneless and slowly losing focus, losing touch.

So he got to watch Spock sit in the Captain’s chair for seven minutes, he thinks as the haze descends, shrouding his mind as it already has his eyes - better than nothing.

When he comes to (and he _knows_ when he comes to, because he half-feels it along with the self-outside-himself stretched out on the biobed as if they’re one and the same, as if they’re identical, flesh and fucking _blood_ , and his eyes are just in the wrong place), it’s to the undeniable sense of a familiar presence, and before he breathes in the scent, before his eyes adjust to see the harsh lighting above him even through the lids, he knows that Bones is there, and suddenly he’s not in such a hurry to wake, to get anywhere, because Bones is there and Jim is there and it’s a simple state of affairs they don’t get to enjoy very often, and if this is the way Jim gets his quality time offered to him, he’s not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, even if he has to endure a couple of extra hyposprays to the neck - he minds them far less than he lets on, really; most of the complaining’s just for show.

But Bones - Bones knows his patients, knows his medicine, knows the body and the mind and sometimes even the soul, and above all else, he knows Jim like the back of his hand, and he knows that Jim’s already awake behind the splay of his lashes on still-swollen cheeks. “Damnit, Jim,” he growls, the sound less in the vein of speech and closer to a vibration, a hum in the other man’s throat, and Jim both sees-and-doesn’t-see, feels-and-doesn’t-feel when Bones starts running calloused fingertips along his collarbone, trailing up slowly to his jawline, feeling with the hands of a surgeon and the hands of a lover like there was never any difference, sighing softly before the hum of the tricorder takes over. “One day without drama, are you even capable of that? Just one day?”

Jim cracks his left eye open, squinting in a wink that he can see looks almost comical, from where he stands watching, even as the echo of it stings behind his iris, yet only for a moment - his eyes flicker back to Bones, whose hands are keying in adjustments for the luminance settings of the overhead lamps, anticipating Jim’s discomfort without a word. It’s the little things.

“‘at happened?” Jim hears himself groan, feels the words like cotton, like tar against the back of his teeth, clogged in his throat, and he swallows in sympathy where his counterpart seems unable as he watches Bones swish his stylus over a PADD with practiced speed, eyes half-lidded and caught in the dim shafts of light.

“Replicator malfunction,” Bones grumbles down at the document clutched in his fingers, gaze flickering to Jim’s every few moments, and each time his sluggishly-adjusting eyes meet that hazel stare, he feels the world shift back into place, something misaligned inside him snapping to where it’s meant to be, and the room adjusts, clears in his vision with Bones as the center, the force that steadies everything else; his own personal axis, his gravity.

“The last update reset your system, erased your preferences,” Bones elaborates, making a few notations in the margins of his chart - Jim knows the way his fingers shift, the way he holds the stylus differently when he write his notes versus when he write his reports, the difference in the angle; and the realization that he notices something so small, so insignificant, strikes an unnamable chord in Jim that runs straight through the core of him, from the center of his chest to the pit of his gut and thrums like a string plucked taut, the note of it resonating infinitely, and he knows that this is his realization, and his alone - this isn’t a distilled reflection of the dream self he’s watching; this did, and always would, belong solely to his singular soul. “Stuck Rigelian peppercorns in your eggs.”

“Goddamn.” Which is so very much what any version of himself would say, apparently, because Jim knows what he’s not supposed to eat, what makes him swell like a balloon or drown on dry land, and fuck all if peppercorns were on his ever-expanding list of “What Part of ‘Do Not Fucking Touch This Because You Have A Potentially Life-Threatening Allergy To It ’ Don’t You Understand, You Careless, Acident-Prone Moron.”

Which, of course, is so titled because that’s the base reaction he normally gets, with variations thereupon; so he’s a little bit surprised when he sees Bones settle in a chair next to the bed, opposite the biosensors; he can see the curiosity, the question in his own bleary eyes where he stares up from the bed, knows it well, but he doesn’t see anything more before Bones’s fingers slip against his temple, threading through his hair with soft intimacy, the shadow of affection where it falls at noon - its reach short, hesitant still, but so dark and strong that nothing else can get through - his eyes, both of his pairs of eyes drop closed, and Jim wishes for a moment that he wasn’t watching, that this was any other fucking dream and that the man on the bed was him, entirely, because the mere whisper of that touch is enough to break him just a little, to make him want.

“Can’t even be pissed at you, can I?” Bones murmurs as his palm cradles the nape of Jim’s neck, lingering before he smoothes Jim’s hair back down, watching each stroke from inception to completion while both Jims watch him. “Kinda innocent in all of this, for once. Just one fucking walking allergy, you are.” And Bones, he half-smiles, and Jim notices from a distance what neither of the men near the bed seem to acknowledge, and that’s the embarrassing way in which the biofunction readings shoot up towards the top of the screen.

“Can I have that on the record, Doctor?” Jim laughs a little, rough but full, from his heart even as it catches on his throat.

“Already is,” Bones holds up the PADD in his hand indicatively with a quirk of his eyebrow, and Jim has to laugh a little, because he’s kind of always loved Bones’s dry sense of humor. And not just because it makes Jim’s own humor seem that much more hysterical. “Alphabetically documented for posterity.”

“Peppercorns of all varieties are now officially off the shipwide menu,” Bones adds, getting to his feet slowly, not yet ready to depart, given his posture, but no longer able to stay. “For future reference.”

“That bad?” Jim asks lightly, and it’s only the accident of perception, of looking in the right place at the right time that he notices the cloud of tension that passes across those eyes like a hurricane - only it isn’t an accident at all, because there’s nowhere he can look, nowhere he _wants_ to look, other than at Bones.

It’s quick, though, and it’s already gone by the time Bones stretches his knuckles over Jim’s, and the last thing Jim can feel is that warmth as fingers squeeze against his own before the scene starts to fade, Bones’s voice deep and full as it echoes: “I’ve pulled you through a helluva lot worse.”

__________________________________

 

Once, Jim Kirk stepped in front of a group of chatty ensigns on his way to the bridge, missing Lieutenant Uhura by exactly twenty-three seconds when she came through from the mess hall. Upon reaching his beloved chair, greeting the crew with a wide grin, and summoning up her impossibly detailed report for his perusal, he misread the mission parameters and hailed the dignitaries on frequency four-beta-gamma instead of beta-delta-two.

There’s barely a warning before hell descends upon them - or else, not _them_ , so much as Jim alone, specifically; he hears an angry hissing from the diplomats across the frequency about numerical sabotage and the promise of grave misfortune, and it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, so removed as it is from himself in the instant before the skies open and all he knows is pain.

It’s not just electricity, it’s something more, something worse that wracks his frame and drives him to his knees, shaking him from head to toe and shivering through his consciousness; he’s a ball of lightning, and it’s ironic, because he knows from the moment it starts that this will be the death of him, and maybe his dad hadn’t been doing anyone any favors by saving him the first time around - apparently, destiny’d finally found him, and she was shaking him, scorching him, tearing him apart from the inside and firing over and over, assaulting him without relent. Exacting her revenge.

And it’s a strange turn of events, a _really_ fucking strange turn of events, to watch the way his body spasms, contorts even as he can feel the shocks, the jolts shivering in his blood, starting and stopping and restarting his heart on a fluctuating whim, sparking a poisonous arrhythmia that stutters trapped, frantic - beating itself into oblivion beneath his ribs. He hears Lieutenant Palmer scream, watches as she freezes, looking on in horror; he sees Spock push her from her station, summoning McCoy from medbay with more urgency than Jim’s ever thought him capable of; watches as Chekov works frantically to trace the energy pattern and disable the attack, the storm that tears through his frame, his death written as certain as his birth; hears the young man bark a warning - “Hikaru, don’t!” - when Sulu moves to intervene; and even as he burns, singed from within, he’s grateful that they have the sense to stay away, to save themselves; he’s always known that he’d trade his life for theirs, and to see them let him do it, let him _prove_ it, almost means more than anything they could do to try and save him now.

In his engaged detachment, his schismatic sense of self, he has the strangely dichotomous presence of mind to know, to feel intimately when the jackhammering of his heart loses any semblance of rhythm, unsteady and frantic as his limbs grow heavy, drifting phantom, and he can see the end as well as he can see the stars. He’s fading even as he remains, the path of certain death tugging even at his separate consciousness, it’s so definite, so undeniable - too strong, goddamnit, too fucking strong.

“Jim.” It’s a kind of gasp really, and it catches in his throat like he’s the one who breathes it, owning it until it becomes to strong, a shout that rattles through the walls, rattling through the slow seep of blood in his veins; “Jim!”

There’s no clear reason as to why, but the shocks cease then, and his world drops to the ground as he falls, still shaking, the vibrations of frenzied footsteps shaking in counterpoint through the floor as they move to reach him. He watches everything happen in slow motion, from a point so far away, the figure of him crumpled at the foot of his chair too far gone to notice anything, pulling Jim slowly but surely to follow - just not yet. “Jim, look at me,” Bones hisses, whispers, pleads as a hand ghosts across his cheek, caressing for an instant before slapping him, forcing his attention, gathering the frayed strands of it and stretching them to breaking. And _damn_ , those hands burn on him, ground him in the present, but it’s worth it, fuck all, but it’s worth it to have that touch, that firm hold to this world combating the pull in his chest and the sting behind his eyes that speaks to so many - _too_ many - things he’s never said, and fuck, but he should have said them.

“Focus on me. Damn it, don’t you close your eyes,” Bones snarls, desperate and so scared as his hand slaps quick against Jim’s jawline. “Come on,” he nearly moans; “just look at me, alright? Focus.”

He wants to; by god, he wants to, but it’s all too hazy, too fucking faint, and the only thing that keeps him holding on this long is the soul-searing ache, raw and bleeding, shining too damn bright in Bones’s eyes; and once his vision blurs, he can only cling to the recollection, and once that’s gone, he falls without a foothold, and not even those hands - those perfect, burning, steady hands - can save him, pull him back from the brink.

“Come on, Jim,” he whispers, a plea meant just for the man in his arms, and Jim wants nothing more than to wrap himself in those words and live there forevermore, but he knows enough to realize when his body’s failing him, to sense when the end is close. Because even as Bones calls for the cardiostimulator, for the cordrazine, Jim knows that the good doctor sees the truth as well as Jim does, that it’s too damn late and he’s too far gone; he knows, because Bones doesn’t have to so much as grab for his tricorder, doesn’t bother with it, but keeps his fingers pressed to Jim’s carotid artery, clinging to the ebbing pulse like the lifeline that it is, both of them knowing it’s only a matter of moments before it snaps.

From a distance, Jim pools his consciousness and banks on the hunch that if he can feel this separate, dying self, then it has to be able to feel him just as much; and with everything in him, he forces a trembling hand to lift from the floor and flitter pathetically, so fucking _weak_ along Bones’s jaw, his eyes glazed and fever bright, but there’s affection there, something more than affection, and Jim needs his Bones to see, even if it kills him.

“You stay with me,” Bones growls, throat tight and voice choked, and Jim wants to make it go away, but he can’t. He can’t speak, can’t hardly swallow, can’t barely move except to blink, to let the drops on his eyelashes meander down his cheek and pool between Bones’s fingers. “You stay with me.”

He just fucking _can’t._

And Bones sees it, knows the struggle like a shock to the heart, sees the effort it takes to make it so, for Jim to hold on just that little bit long for the man who holds him close, even knowing that it will be the end of him; he _knows_ it, they both do, but it’s okay. It’s all okay, because everything is black except Bones, even as the edges close in around that beautiful, anguished face, and Jim knows that this is the only thing he wants to see before the end, and if nothing else, he’s damn lucky to have gotten it.

“You don’t get to duck out yet, you stubborn son of a bitch,” Bones whispers, forces through clenched teeth too close to Jim’s mouth, too soft and too near and too wet for Jim’s wasted, fleeting heart to bear the hurt, goddamnit; “Not fucking yet.”

But everything is gone before he gets the chance to say goodbye, which is how he’d always figured it would happen but had always hoped it wouldn’t, and if Jim could just open his eyes, any of his eyes, all of them, one of them, from any vantage point, he would have, if only to see where to raise his numbed hand, where to drag a deadened finger soft across a cheek and wipe away the tears that he could hear but couldn’t see; but that ship had sailed before Jim had even reached the dock, and the last thing he knows are Bones’s lips on his own - and fuck if he can’t feel it, can’t taste him, burning and wild, the breaking of his heart sharp against Jim’s tongue. And once the scene starts to fade, the sounds muffled and faint, the afterimage, the echo still lingers. And when Jim’s own eyes fly open and his dim quarters flood him with truth and perspective, there’s a pressure, a pull in his chest, and he dwells upon the look in Bones’ eyes - something unnamable, but something that races in his pulse nonetheless, his heart pounding until he’s dizzy; until, if he’d been as torn open in the flesh as he’d felt in his head - shocked to fuck on the floor of his bridge - he’d have bled out against his sheets.

__________________________________

 

Once, Jim Kirk called Spock and Uhura on their flagrant disregard for regulation in pursuing their personal dalliances, simply because he required amusement, and the way Uhura flushed when she was simultaneously pissed and embarrassed never failed to turn Jim into a fucking hyena when he thought about it after the fact.

He departs the bridge without much thought, and eats dinner alone. It’s a dull affair of caesar salad, baked potato soup, and garlic breadsticks, and he chews slowly, each moment dredging by with the weight of hours, of days, and there’s an emptiness in his room, in himself that doesn’t fill, doesn’t ebb, so hollow and black that his food is cold, only picked at by the time he comms Bones’s quarters with a strange fluttering, a tightness in his chest as he waits for a response.

He waits in vain, and the taut pull between his lungs draws in all the slack, stretched to breaking as he breathes, leaving the meal unfinished at the table and taking off for sick bay with all the single-minded purpose of the drowning, of the damned; hope in his heart and starch on his tongue, struck by a clarity so sudden, so painstakingly bright.

He understands, somehow. He understands, and he knows what it is that he’s been missing. What he wants.

He’s been denying himself the one thing that he needs more than anything else, denying that he even needs it at all, because he’s afraid of getting burned. Of losing what he has in trying to take more.

Because with Bones, everything feels like he imagines it’s supposed to. When they’re together, Jim can feel the tension, something unexpected that had taken up permanent residence in him after assuming the captainship, just melt away, slide off him like the rain as he breathes again without that weight against his chest. When they kiss, Jim feels like if that’s all he ever got to do again, it might not be so bad. When they wake up, naked and sweat-slick and stuck to the sheets, Jim’s glad, down to the very core of him, that, in reality, he doesn’t really _have_ to stick with just the kissing. When they argue, it’s never with any real malice - there’s always a softness, an ache inside that keeps it from going to far, a knowledge that hurting one another is somehow just roundabout way of hurting themselves. And it’s never been like this for him before; he’s never felt more alive, more whole, and this thing between them, this subtle and profound thing that puts his pieces all together, is something that’s so precious that he refuses to test it, to trust it - to put weight upon its fractures in case it crumbles and he can’t survive the fall.

But the truth is that he’s never trusted anything more than he trusts this; than he trusts Bones. Nothing has ever come close to feeling this right, this sound in his entire life; not joining Starfleet, not saving the planet, not captaining a ship. Nothing. And the mutinous part of Jim’s soul that warns him not to give himself up, begs him to keep himself safe - even that voice murmurs that this is worth it, that if anything was ever worth his pain, his risk, his heart on a platter, for fuck’s sake, then it’s _this_. He’s risked his life for so much less; if his soul was ever worth venturing, it’s sure as hell worth it for this - this gamble, this leap of faith. His heart thuds hard in the dip between his collarbones, and he lets his eyes drift closed for the longest of moments before he takes the plunge, pleading gravity to be gentle, to be kind, and to give him a soft fall, or a swift death. Just this once.

And there’s a word for this, goddamnit, and it’s a word Jim never dared to think about, never dared to even consider wanting - _needing_. It’s a word that means giving and being and doing and living and breathing and surviving and cherishing and just _everything_ ; it’s a word that means _everything_ , and it fits here like it was never meant to fit anywhere else in Jim’s life, in Jim’s world, and it terrifies him more than he’s willing to own to, a terror borne blatant and strong in the frantic pace of his heart as he walks, pounding twice for every breath, four times for every labored step. It’s a word that means sacrificing yourself to see the one who holds all of you live on; that sent him off on a shuttle the day he was born so that he could know, someday, what that word was, what it means - what it could feel like, deep in his soul.

And that’s a win, Jim thinks, that’s a win if ever there was one.

His steps echo through the empty spaces between the biobeds, his pulse louder, so much louder than the reverberation from his boots, and his breath pulls in sharp until his eyes meet fathomless hazel across the way, and the air catches and his heart stutters and he just stares, suddenly terrified, suddenly just a little bit dizzy.

But suddenly, he’s certain, from the soft smirk of a grin that lights up that whole fucking face, that maybe he didn’t have anything to worry about in the first place.

__________________________________

 

Once, Jim Kirk sent his CMO a personal memo, and signed it ‘Jim.’

And Jim won’t lie - he was kind of hoping this would have been a big deal, out of everything. That, in tagging that quick little confession on the bottom of his afternoon correspondence with his work-a-holic lover, that he’d made him pause somehow, maybe made him smile and not step out of his office three seconds sooner when he may have been jabbed with a hypospray filled with an incurable virus from Tuturon VI by some undetected saboteur, or some wet-behind-the-ears rookie working in Sciences who’d just rounded the corner at the wrong moment. Or that it had made him content enough, distracted enough not to hunt Jim down and insist on accompanying them planetside for some mission or another, where he’d have stood just to Jim’s right as he sometimes did and would have caught the bullet - from some hostile indigenous tribe that most certainly _hadn’t_ been in the mission report - full in the chest upon materializing. Maybe it was selfish, juvenile - maybe it was absurd, but he’d kind of been hoping that that infamous L-word word had been world-changing, life-altering, for someone other than himself.

But what he sees isn’t anything special, isn’t anything new - he looks just a little different, just a little more... comfortable, perhaps. His hair is different. And Bones - who is leaving Jim’s quarters with him, right before his eyes - his hair is just a little longer, and there’s a bit of stubble on his cheeks, and Jim, as he watches, aches to reach out and touch.

They’re close, proximity-wise, and Jim knows himself well enough to be able to tell that the hand he cannot see, hidden between them, is brushing Bones’s fingertips with a coy sort of affection as they walk, as they banter, as they laugh, and something twists inside Jim as he bears witness, something sour and sharp that makes the bile in his stomach sear at the base of his throat for reasons beyond his ken.

And when everything freezes for a fraction of a moment - one that stretches out predictably into infinity without taking up the space of a breath - and Jim’s blue eyes meet their twins, Jim knows, somehow, that this version of himself can see him, knows he’s there, that he’s watching; and given the way his mouth quirks, the way he pulls away from Bones just the slightest bit and his eyes narrow a little as focuses in on Jim where he stands apart, he knows that there’s something this other-self needs him to understand.

His doppelgänger cocks his head just barely towards the display panel to his right - Jim’s left - and stares intently at the center of it as time slips, ceases to exist, and Jim’s eyes follow, noting the day and time; forty-three minutes past nine, two years from the very day he knew as his own. His brow creases as he stares at himself, confused, uncertain, but the other him is already turning back, hand against Bones’s as if it was never gone, and Jim feels himself falling away, feels sleep edging off like the tides, like a receding buzz, and he’s back in his room again, upon his bed, tangled in his sheets, and all he can remember is the sinking feeling in his stomach, and the promise of something monumental, two years in coming.

__________________________________

 

On any given day - the same two years later as told by the same display from the same dream that had lingered in pieces, in fragments at the back of his mind all this time - Jim Kirk comes to an understanding.

He dreams again that night, sees himself as he is now, that once-foreign comfort in him now familiar, because it’s what he’s gradually seen replace the unspoken fears, the unthinkable insecurities, bit by bit in the mirror every morning, a softness that’s been granted him by the press of an open mouth to the crook of his neck, licking off the last drops of water from an indulgent morning shower; by the crease of a palm at his waist, pulling him close. He’s fallen into a balance, and rhythm, and it’s reassuring now, to see it from the outside, to know it for sure.

He’s with Bones, of course, just as he was the first time, just as he is when he wakes; the levity, the lightness about them is tangible, and it no longer disturbs him, makes him sad with want for it, because it’s what he has every morning, what he never has to let go of. Not anymore. To witness it now only makes him smile wider, feel warmer.

And still, for all the similarities between himself and the man staring back at him in his own mind, there’s something missing. There’s a depth, a certainty that’s buried, that falls short, and Jim can’t quite understand where it’s gone, or where it’s meant to be; he only knows that it should be there, and that it isn’t - and the fact that it isn’t is important, somehow - more crucial than anything he’s ever known, and there’s adrenaline surging through his veins as he tries to decode the message, to solve the mystery, because whatever it is, it’s the key. It’s why he’s back here. It’s why he’d come in the first place.

He watches carefully, noting their body language, the way they move with one another, the way their hands brush; and his gaze breaks to meet his own eyes again - a sadness in them that had never been there before, and emptiness that Jim can feel in his own gut, a phantom hole that had been filled for him long ago by the knowledge that he was wanted, that he was loved; a fear so deep that Jim doesn’t know how he could have missed it, how he’d failed to notice before - and those eyes, _his_ eyes; in that single moment between blinks, they tell him everything he needs to know.

He follows his own gaze, laden with longing and regret, back down to their hands, Jim’s left in Bones’s right, and if he looks he can see Bones’s left hand, swinging freely at his side, though of his own right hand, his wrist is as far as he can discern. His eyes trail across knuckles, over nail-beds, and meeting in the middle, his breath catches as it all makes that sudden, gut-wrenching sort of sense that Jim hadn’t even known he’d been looking for, been just a little bit afraid of in the back of his mind for the two years he’d been left to wonder.

Their ring fingers, where they touch, are unadorned, empty; and Jim’s heart hits hard against his ribs as he realizes what this dream-self had been trying to tell him all along, what the difference was, the world-changing, life-altering distinction he’d been hoping for.

He understands now; he understands. The difference between love and devotion; the difference between now and forever.

The dream-Jim’s fingers stroke innocently against the bare skin where Jim’s real, honest-to-god Bones never took off his wedding ring, smiling softly, so fucking _sad_ as he glances back at Jim once more, and Jim doesn’t need to see anymore, doesn’t _want_ to, because he’d managed, somehow, to avert this disaster, to save himself this unspoken pain, and there’s no need any longer to dwell on the what-ifs.

In his sleep, Jim holds tighter to his Bones, pressed at Jim’s spine and wrapped around him, gathering their hands together and holding them against his chest. Bones’s palm lies flat against his sternum, the warm metal on his ring finger like gold in Jim’s veins, and something in him snaps, gives way; the tears that fall in darkness, in blissful rest will be dry by morning, and as the star fly by unseen, he breathes.

They both breathe.

__________________________________

 

The mess hall’s mostly empty when he gets there the next morning, Bones having left him to sleep in after he’d refused to get out of bed the seventh time, and his eyes don’t even have to search for the man where he sits, don’t have to know that Bones usually occupies the back corner table, second chair from the left - Jim just finds him, like he always does, like he always will. And it’s without hesitation, without a second thought that he kisses his lover, his partner - his _forever_ , goddamnit - full on the lips like the sky is falling; like the world is ending, and Leonard H. McCoy is the only haven, the only still-point in a crumbling universe.

And Bones kisses back without reservation, without shame, and Jim knows in the marrow of his bones that even if this was never a choice - not really - he’s so fucking _glad_ that he made it.


End file.
